The minimum requirements of language control: Evidence from sequential predictability effects in language switching.

Abstract

The current study systematically examined the influence of sequential predictability of languages and concepts on language switching. To this end, 2 language switching paradigms were combined. To measure language switching with a random sequence of languages and/or concepts, we used a language switching paradigm that implements visual cues and stimuli. The other paradigm implements a fixed sequence of languages and/or concepts to measure predictable language switching. Four experiments that used these 2 paradigms showed that switch costs were smaller when both the language and concept were predictably known, whereas no overall switch cost reduction was found when just the language or concept was predictable. These results indicate that knowing both language and concept (i.e., response) can resolve language interference. However, interference resolution does not start solely based on the knowledge of which concept or language one has to produce. We discuss how existent models should be revised to accommodate these results.

Exploring the functional locus of language switching: Evidence from a PRP paradigm

“…This is also proposed by several other language control models (e.g., Declerck, Koch, & Philipp, 2015;Grainger et al, 2010). However, there are also models that assume that language control occurs at a pre-selection stage, such as the "complex access, easy selection" approach of La Heij (2005).…”

The other modality: Auditory stimuli in language switching

“…Typically, worse performance is observed in switch trials than repetition trials (e.g., Costa & Santesteban, 2004;Declerck, Koch, & Philipp, 2015;Philipp et al, 2007;Prior & Gollan, 2013). This performance difference is termed "switch costs" and is considered to be a marker for language control (e.g., Green, 1998).…”

“…To further reduce any amount of auditory or visual features in the current study, apart from the stimuli, an alternating language sequence was used (e.g., Declerck, Philipp, & Koch, 2013;Declerck et al, 2015) instead of visual language cues (e.g., Costa & Santesteban, 2004;Philipp et al, 2007;Prior & Gollan, 2013). The implementation of an alternating language sequence entails that the target language changes predictably after every second trial, without any additional visual or auditory external cue.…”

“…Several models of language control (e.g., Declerck et al, 2015;Green, 1998;Schwieter & Sunderman, 2008) assume that the functional locus of language control is located prior to phonology, at the lexical-semantic level, which encompasses meaning and syntactic information. Next to the large body of evidence that shows that semantic information is modality-specific (for a review, see, e.g., Barsalou, 1999); there are studies that indicate that there are differences in lexical-semantic processing between auditory and visual stimuli (e.g., Gomes, Ritter, Tartter, Vaughan, & Rosen, 1997;Holcomb & Neville, 1990).…”

A review of control processes and their locus in language switching

“…While no visual language cues are necessary in alternating language switching and are not even implemented with voluntary language switching, no visual language cues AND stimuli are presented in the sequence-based language switching (SBLS) paradigm (e.g., Declerck, Koch, & Philipp, 2015a;Declerck et al, 2013). To produce the required language and concept, bilinguals memorize a sequence for both.…”